Love Me if You Dare

by Toni Blake

  “Hi,” she said to the cat.

  “Meow.” He stood up on the bed.

  So she leaned down to pet him, assuming his standing was an invitation for her to do that. He pressed his head against her touch in a way that indicated he liked it, and it was strange how nice that continued to feel, to make the cat happy through such a simple gesture.

  “I guess I should probably take you back to Polly,” she said to Tiger. She honestly wasn’t sure why she hadn’t yet. Maybe because . . . it still seemed more like taking him back to being homeless than taking him back to Polly. The more time she spent with Tiger, the more the idea of his homelessness bothered her. Everyone should have a place where they felt loved, a place they felt they belonged. “Or . . . maybe I won’t. Just yet anyway.”

  She’d had the curtains in her room closed when she’d left last night, but now she decided to open them and let the sun in. And she needed to map out a plan for her day so she wouldn’t just sit around and mope.

  But why would you mope? You got what you wanted, after all—you got to experience sex with him; the opportunity, and the powerful chemistry, didn’t pass you by. And it was the best sex of your life.

  As she pulled back the drapes, though, and again caught herself peering out as far as she could, across the street, toward the beach, she understood all too well.

  It’s easy to say no-strings-attached . . . before you feel attached. And it’s easy to say a little good sex with someone you want badly is better than no sex with someone you want badly . . . until it’s over. But it was over and she felt attached. Damn it. How had that happened?

  Ugh, another downside of this being more open thing. You accidentally let down some sort of wall or barrier that usually holds any vulnerability or risky emotions at bay.

  And the truth was, even having gotten what she’d wanted, she’d somehow come out of it feeling rejected all over again. And it was her own damn fault, every bit of it. She’d agreed to the no-strings thing. And in reality, she couldn’t have a strings thing with him anyway, for so many reasons. But the fact that he was so absolutely happy to get up and leave her in his bed to go do something as completely everyday and mundane as take a walk sent a clear message: It was fun, but I’m done.

  And that should be fine with her. It shouldn’t hurt. Even a little. She was a grown-up, and sometimes grown-ups had sex without it meaning anything or forging some intense bond.

  Only . . . she’d woken up a time or two in the night and it had never even crossed her mind to leave, to cut it short, to make sure it meant nothing. She’d liked being in his bed, liked knowing he was next to her. She supposed, deep down, she’d hoped there’d be more.

  But there wasn’t. And that’s okay. She swallowed back the slight lump in her throat and told herself she’d just learned something valuable: One night stands didn’t work for her. It was probably why she’d never had one. She just had too much respect for herself and thought she was worth more than that, and wanted any guy she slept with to think it, too.

  Okay—lesson learned. Now move on with your life.

  Quit thinking about Reece. Quit thinking about last night. Quit thinking about all the sexiness, all the naughtiness, all the heat, all the sense of . . . connection. It’s over—no need to dwell on it and let it make you feel bad or like you’re missing out on something by not having more.

  So she took a shower and freshened up and it felt a little like . . . washing last night away. Or at least washing away the vague feeling of loss it had left behind inside her.

  And in the spirit of toughening back up, she mentally dug in her heels and reminded herself why she was here. She had a job to do and it would be a good time to get back to doing it.

  Good Lord, if Phil knew you just slept with the holdout, he’d have a cow.

  Or . . . maybe he’d ask you how you were using that to leverage Vanderhook’s position.

  But either way, she’d just keep that her little secret, put it behind her, and get back to figuring out how to acquire the Happy Crab the old-fashioned way—which meant, if you can’t convince them, find a way to force it.

  And so as she dried her hair, then put on clean khaki shorts and a fitted tee, her mind turned back toward legal routes. Were there any laws that Reece or the Happy Crab might be unwittingly breaking?

  Opening her laptop, she sat in the chair near the window and propped her feet up on the sill, ankles crossed, getting comfortable for doing some online searching. It didn’t take long before she’d accessed the City of Coral Cove’s website, and soon after that, she came across a lengthy document containing all the town’s laws and ordinances.

  Since she didn’t know what she was looking for, she simply began to read. It was dry, stale reading at best, but it was all she had to go on right now, so she stuck with it, meticulously wading through it for over an hour.

  There were lots of laws about things like water and sewer and easements, and for all she knew, Reece wasn’t within regulation on one or more of those things, but it would take some serious investigation to figure that out. So keep looking.

  And that was when she stumbled upon something that had never crossed her mind—some laws concerning animals and reptiles.

  NO EXOTIC OR WILD ANIMALS CAN BE KEPT, LOOSE OR CAGED, AT A RESIDENCE OR BUSINESS.

  NO EXOTIC OR WILD ANIMALS CAN BE SHOWN OR DISPLAYED FOR PROFIT WITHIN CITY LIMITS.

  NO WILD REPTILES CAN BE KEPT, LOOSE, ON THE PREMISES OF A BUSINESS.

  She stopped. Reread that last one.

  And then her cell phone rang, startling her, and she nearly threw her laptop up in the air.

  Getting hold of herself, she snatched the phone from the table next to her to see that—speak, or think, of the devil—it was Phil himself.

  “Hi Phil,” she answered, trying to sound friendly as she picked up.

  “I hope you’re making some serious progress on the Coral Cove property because Windchime is breathing down my fucking neck. I just got an earful from them on the phone.”

  She winced. Clearly he was paying it forward. But she tried to make light of it and change the tone. “Well, hello to you, too,” she joked.

  “This isn’t funny, Camille. What have you got for me?”

  Her stomach dropped a little. Had he ever sounded so downright disrespectful toward her? Or . . . maybe he always had and she’d just never noticed before. Strange—looking at the world through softer eyes made her notice things that she wondered if, in the past, had just escaped her.

  “I’m still working on wearing the owner down.” Which wasn’t exactly true, but she had to say something.

  On the other end came a dissatisfied sigh that cut through her heart like a knife. “That’s not good enough. And I don’t know what the problem is or what’s taking so much time, but let me make this very clear—you need to acquire this property, one way or another. If the seller won’t sell, find another way. And you need to do it fast. Got it?”

  Camille sucked in her breath. This was the closest Phil had ever come to yelling at her and it hurt. Even though she supposed she shouldn’t take it personally. “Or what?” she asked sharply, now letting her own anger show.

  “Or I’ll find somebody who will.”

  Oh. Wow. He was threatening her. Threatening her job. Threatening the core of her life, the thing she held dearest. And all over one slow-moving acquisition. She felt like the A student bringing home a C and being treated like a delinquent for it. Her stomach churned.

  She couldn’t lose her job. She couldn’t. It was all she had. Everything. Without it, who would she be? She didn’t even know.

  Her gut response: Give him something—anything.

  “I’m looking through laws and ordinances,” she heard herself say. To show she was working at this constructively. And maybe she even felt a little guilty since a lot of her intended work had, along the way, definitely turned to pleasure.

  “Anything there?” For the first time, he sounded hopeful.

&
nbsp; “I’m not sure, maybe. I need to learn more about what some of the laws regarding water and sewer entail. And there’s one about reptiles loose on the premises that he might be breaking because he has a giant iguana.”

  “Hmm . . .” Phil didn’t sound impressed.

  But then, she supposed an iguana and vague possibilities concerning water didn’t exactly seem promising. So she added, “I just found this stuff within the last few minutes, so I haven’t gotten to dig into any of it yet—give me a few more days. I need to tiptoe around it. People here love the property owner and would get behind him if they knew the whole situation.”

  “A few more days, huh?” Phil asked, back to sounding doubtful.

  “Yeah,” she said simply. But she delivered that one word trying to sound as professional and determined and capable as she usually was.

  “Don’t let me down on this, Camille,” he told her. And then he hung up.

  . . . and above all, you lost the certainty

  that you would win.

  J. M. Barrie, Peter and Wendy

  Chapter 16

  “ASSHOLE!” SHE bit off—so sharply that the cat curled in the chair opposite her flinched.

  “Not you,” she said. “Him.”

  And then she set both phone and laptop aside—because she felt the urge to pull the kitty over into her lap. Like maybe the companionship would be a bigger help in thinking it all through than continuing to hold on to cold, hard pieces of technology.

  “Besides being homeless,” she said to Tiger wistfully, “you really have it pretty good. No job or overbearing boss to deal with. No pesky relationship problems. Okay, yeah, food and shelter are significant issues, but . . . at least you have those for now, right?”

  She sighed, though, knowing that wouldn’t last, either. And a part of her thought she should consider taking Tiger home to Atlanta with her, but . . . she wasn’t sure if he would like being a strictly indoor cat who never saw the light of day in her condo. Something about him fit here, at the beach. Or maybe she was just using that as some sort of excuse, a reason not to get any further attached. Attachments only seemed to hurt, after all. Old ones, new ones—all of them.

  “You’re a nice cat,” she told him, and he responded by rolling to his back in her lap and she knew he wanted her to scratch his tummy, so she did.

  “But you look practically obscene like that, you know,” she added on a laugh.

  And then she noticed something else. She hadn’t seen a lot—okay, not any—cat genitalia, but . . . something about the glimpse she’d just caught didn’t seem quite right to her. So she reached overtop the cat and Googled on her laptop until she found some photos that confirmed it.

  “Oh my God!” she said, peering down at the cat. “You’re not a Tiger at all! You’re a . . . Tiger Lily!” Tiger, it turned out, was actually a girl!

  She was still absorbing that when a knock came on the door. She flinched and peered down at the cat—who now suddenly felt like a girlfriend and confidante. “Who could that be?” she whispered. Then she lowered the kitty to the floor, got up, and checked the peephole.

  “It’s Reece!” she said on a soft gasp, suffering a blend of shock, joy, and horror all at once. After which she sent a panicky look to Tiger Lily. “Hide!”

  When the cat did not immediately scamper out of sight under the bed, she remembered cats don’t speak English, so rushed to scoop up her furry orangy-yellow friend and rush her into the bathroom. “Be quiet,” she gently admonished her. “It’s for your own good.” Then shut the door and rushed back to open the other one.

  The man on the other side gave her his usual laid-back, sexy smile. “Hey.”

  And last night came rushing back to her. Apparently she hadn’t washed it away at all. In fact, the fresh memories, heightened by his presence, made her warm all over, in some places more than others. “Hey,” she said, that giddy sort of elation moving all through her now.

  “I was thinking of hitting the beach.”

  “I thought you already hit it this morning.”

  “I mean for swimming. It’s a beautiful day. Thought you might want to join me.”

  Oh. So . . . no heave-ho. She’d misread that. There was . . . more.

  And maybe how much that thrilled her should have scared her, too, warned her she was getting in too deep here—but it made her too happy to even examine that part. In fact, no less than pure jubilation rushed through her veins. And it was so uplifting to no longer feel rejected! Not to mention a nice distraction from what had happened between her and Phil.

  “Okay,” she said nonchalantly. She didn’t want to show her hand, after all.

  And he looked pleased. “Great. Toss on your suit and we can go.”

  But her thoughts flew to the cat, who she didn’t want to leave trapped in a windowless bathroom all day. “Tell you what,” she said. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll meet you at the office.”

  He nodded. “Cool.”

  Just then, she heard a slight mewing sound. Just one. But crap.

  She watched as Reece squinted in confusion. “Did you just hear a sound like a cat?”

  She shook her head definitively. “No.”

  Yet his expression grew more perplexed. “I keep thinking I hear a cat somewhere. I’ve had Riley check all the rooms, though—so I don’t know what the hell I’m hearing.” He gave his head a light shake, as if to clear it.

  “I don’t know either,” she said, then began ushering him toward the door. “But tick tock on that ten minutes. Gotta get ready.”

  Which was precisely when she heard a slightly louder meow, which she instinctively tried to cover with her own voice, and what came out was a sudden and long sort of, “Wowwwwww.”

  Reece had just turned to go, but now he stopped to give her a weird look. “Huh?”

  She blinked and tried to act natural. “I just said wow.”

  He lowered his chin, widened his eyes in question. “About?”

  “Like . . . wow, I love swimming at the beach. And I haven’t done that in a while, so I’m excited.” She smiled and attempted to look that way.

  “Okay, Tink, whatever you say,” he told her, sounding a little skeptical—but then headed for the door again.

  When it finally closed behind him a few seconds later, Cami let out a sigh of relief. Then went to release the captive in the bathroom.

  As Tiger Lily came trotting out, Cami informed the cat, “Um, bad job on the staying quiet. You seriously need to work on that or you’ll get us both in big trouble.”

  REECE hadn’t exactly planned to end up at the beach with Cami this afternoon, but here they were. As he glanced at the woman next to him, all stretched out in the sun, eyes shut, skin glistening as it tanned, he thought through his day.

  This morning he’d wanted to escape. It had seemed wise. As it always did. It was how he usually handled any overnight visitors to his bed—he left a friendly note and took an early morning walk. It wasn’t about dumping her—or anyone else. It was about just . . . putting some healthy distance between them. Reminding them both that this wasn’t a big, serious, joined-at-the-hip kind of thing. A little distance was usually a good idea.

  There was always something a little otherworldly about being out on the beach just after sunrise, when it was empty and felt . . . new, like it had been somehow reborn overnight. There was just something pure and . . . raw about it at the same time. And then the sun rose a little higher and more people started to arrive, and eventually it turned into another normal day—and that was when he’d headed back.

  He’d returned to his apartment hoping she’d be gone—yet sorry when she was. For reasons he couldn’t explain. From what he could tell, she’d eaten something and drunk a small glass of juice, then vacated the premises. No return note. No clue of whether she was happy or sad or mad or anything else.

  And normally that would have suited him fine, but for some reason she’d stayed on his mind. So he’d taken a shower and found some producti
ve stuff to do.

  He’d gone to the grocery and bought the raw veggies that made up Fifi’s diet, and spent some time cutting them into meal-sized portions for the coming week. Then he’d cleaned her habitat next to the office, watering the plants there and dusting the heat lamps that kept her warm when the Florida temps dropped to less than tropical. After that, he’d filled a bucket with some soapy water and taken to washing his boats, then hosing them down. They were due for it, especially the sloop.

  As he’d worked, he’d thought about his discussion with Cami about the Lisa Renee. And how they weren’t going to mix work and pleasure, but she sort of had anyway with that conversation. It was confusing to him and he still wasn’t sure whether she’d really been trying to be helpful—or manipulate him.

  “Gettin’ her ready for a voyage?”

  He’d stopped spraying down the sloop’s bow at the sound of Riley’s voice and looked up to see the good-natured old man approaching on the dock. “Nah,” Reece said. “Just figured she was due for a washing.”

  “Maybe you should take her out soon,” Riley suggested.

  That was probably true. But he’d explained to Riley why he didn’t. “You know every time I do it just brings up bad memories for me.”

  Riley had nodded in understanding. But then he’d said, “Oughta take the lady in room eleven out for a ride and build some better memories.”

  Reece hadn’t responded to that, just changing the subject with his older friend.

  But then, damn, somehow or another he’d soon found himself finished with the boats and meandering down to Cami’s room to see what she was up to. The idea about the beach had just popped out of his mouth.

  And here they were. And he wasn’t sorry. Now they basked in the sun, but a little while ago he’d found himself playing in the breaking waves with her, laughing with her, kissing her. It had been . . . nice. Fun. And shockingly easy considering where they’d been a few short days ago.

  You like her too much.

  And that should worry you like hell.